Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Turkish President RecepTayyipErdogan has stepped into the shoes of Mustafa Kemal Pasha “Ataturk”, nearly a hundred years after the founder of modern Turkey dismantled the Ottoman Empire and the Sultanate-cum-Caliphate, a move that launched an undeclared worldwide deIslamization process.
The decrepit Ottoman Empire, the last of the Muslim empire, had been around for nearly seven centuries (1299-1922), representing “Muslim Brotherhood”, mainly the Sunni Muslims’ Amir-ul-Mominin (Commander of the Faithful). The rump Empire had earned the dubious sobriquet as the “Sick Man of Europe”, as its European colonies broke away at breakneck speed in the 19th century in what became known as the inexorable process of “Balkanization”, reviving independent, Christian-dominated nations of Eastern and Central Europe.
During the First World War (1914-18), the short-sided Ottomans sided with the losers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria) and lost heavily. Realising this inevitability, and the fact that Islam had lost its cementing strength amongst the Muslims in the face of modernity—democracy, science and technology—Mustafa Kemal dissolved the Ottoman Empire, turned the truncated Turkey into a secular state, allowed the Middle Eastern and North African colonies to break away from the Empire—which resulted in a slowly-unfolding global deIslamization process. Its dissolution was somewhat like that of the Soviet Union (1917-1991) and emergence of several Muslim nation-states in Central Asia.
Erdogan, during his 17 years in power, has been trying to revive the Sultanate-cum-Caliphate. He is making all he can to reIslamizeTurkey and revivify the Ottoman Empire. For this, he has been rapidly changing his ‘sleeping partners’—USA, Europe,and Russia, on the one hand and China, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia on the other. This has created a huge trust deficit for Turkey as big as for China.
In 2019, he tried to forge anon-Arab axis with Pakistan and Malaysia within the Saudi-controlled Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), only to cut a sorry figure as he found few takers. With similar objectives, he has bombed Syria in a bid to make Ankara a regional power, and has also been trying to fish in the troubled Libyan waters, much to the chagrin of Egypt.
Finding few supporters to his muscle-flexing, he has now embarked upon an openly anti-Christian campaign to attract attention which many Turks see as a merely election gimmick. Recently, he announced to change the status of Hagia Sophia from a UNESCO World Heritage Site to a Muslim mosque! And, even invited Pope Francis to the ceremony, as if to rub salt into The Vatican’s wounds. This is seen as Turkey’s reminder to the Christians of the Eight bloody Crusades in the medieval era (1096-1271).
On Friday, prayers were held at Hagia Sophia for the first time after Erdoganre-designated it as a mosque. But the President did it so ‘legally’: he had his acolytes successfully seek the museum’s existing status annulled by a court!
What is Hagia Sophia, the Greek word for “Divine Wisdom”?
Based at Istanbul, the 1,500-years-old shrine has been a Christian Byzantine cathedral for nearly 900 years, before it was seized by the Ottoman conquerors and converted into a mosque. Muslims prayed at this mosque until 1934 when it was turned into a museum.
It has beena major exalted seat of Christian and then Muslim worship. Changing its status may have profound repercussions for followers of both the Abrahamic faiths.
The shrine was established in 537 by Byzantine emperor Justinian as the centre of Orthodox Christianity. It remained the world’s largest church for centuries.
Over centuries, Hagia Sophia remained under Byzantine control, barring a short period of its seizure by the European Crusaders in the 13th century, when Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror converted it into a mosque.
But even the Ottomans did not destroy its essentially Christian character. They merely covered its Christian icons and gold mosaics with huge black panels embellished with the names of Allah, Prophet Mohammad and Muslim caliphs in Arabic calligraphy.
In 1934 modern Turkey’s first president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk converted Hagia Sophia into a museum, a major place of tourist attraction. To retain its tourist attraction and the revenue it generates, Turkey has managed to retain its Christian frescoes and mosaics which will be concealed during Muslim prayer times, but remain on display for tourists.
On their part, the Christians have not taken this status-changing forgery lightly. The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew,spiritual head of some 300 million Orthodox Christians, said the move would fracture relations between eastern and western countries.
In neighbouring Greece, a predominantly Orthodox nation, Prime Minister KyriakosMitsotakis said: “This is a choice which offends all those who also recognise the monument as a World Heritage Site.”
The coming crisis is unfolding. And the last word on Hagia Sophia is still not out!